Cruel World 2: Never More Can Sever
by WynterSky
Summary: In an attempt to help Itachi adjust to normal ninja life, Fugaku sends him along with Kakashi and Team 7 to the Chuunin Exams. However, there's trouble brewing back in Konoha...Sequel to Cruel World Be Forgiving.
1. Chapter 1

[A/N: Just to let you know, this story starts a few months after the last proper chapter of Cruel World, but only a short time after its epilogue, so around midsummer. Also, thank you to my beta-er, Rose202!]

Chapter 1:  
>Fugaku sighed as he signed a paper and set it aside. He had been putting off his paperwork for more pleasant things for several months, but it had finally caught up with him—literally this time. A chuunin from the police department had come running after him as he toured the compound that morning and handed him a stack of papers large enough to keep him busy for days. While Fugaku understood the necessity of getting it done, there were many things he would rather be doing, most prominent of which being spending time with Itachi and Sasuke.<p>

Sasuke had left that morning as usual to train with his team, but Fugaku wasn't exactly sure where Itachi had gotten to. Fugaku hadn't heard anything from where he was in the office, but that didn't mean much since Itachi could be almost completely silent without even realizing it.

Suddenly feeling the urge to reassure himself of Itachi's safety, Fugaku pushed his papers aside and headed out of the office. "Itachi?"

Itachi was not in the house, which was a little surprising but not yet cause for alarm. While Itachi was rarely confident enough to leave the house by himself, he had once or twice and Fugaku had tried to encourage him to continue to do so. However, when he failed to find Itachi at Shisui's home—the other place he usually ended up at—Fugaku began to think that something could be wrong.

An exhaustive search through the rest of the compound came up with nothing. Fugaku was about to see if he might have gone to the training field where Sasuke and his team were when he passed his own house and saw a familiar figure sitting on the porch.

"Itachi!" Fugaku said in relief, running over to the house. "What have you been doing? I've been all over looking for you!"

"I'm sorry, Otou-sama, please forgive me," Itachi replied quietly.

Fugaku mentally chided himself for triggering Itachi's overly sensitive guilt complex. "That's all right, Itachi," he said quickly. "It's just that you worried me—what is that?" he finished, noticing the furry bundle that Itachi was holding.

"Well...it's..." Itachi began vaguely, holding out what Fugaku recognized as a cat. Said cat, not seeming at all pleased at the way Itachi was now holding it, squirmed and pawed at Itachi's hands until he set it down on the porch, but did not sprint away as Fugaku would have expected a stray to do.

"Where did you find it?" Fugaku asked, kneeling down on the porch and reaching out to pet the cat, which was now curled up against Itachi's side. He pulled his hand back just in time as the cat hissed and swiped at him.

"No, you have to be nice to Otou-sama!" Itachi said firmly, picking up the cat again. "Oh, I found it under the east storehouse," he added, remembering Fugaku's question. Fugaku could tell that Itachi wanted to say something else, but he stopped himself in the middle of the first word and turned away to keep petting the cat.

"You can keep it, if you like," Fugaku said, guessing what Itachi's request would have been. Itachi could almost never bring himself to actually ask for anything, so Fugaku had improved quickly in deducing those sorts of things. It was still troubling to him that Itachi was so dependent; maybe having a pet would help.

"Really?" Itachi said, sounding as if he didn't quite believe it.

"Of course," Fugaku replied. "Here, bring it inside."

Once the cat was brought inside and fed, it only took a few scratches for Fugaku to figure out that it was horribly ill-tempered. Strangely enough, it did seem to like, or at least tolerate, Itachi. Fugaku wasn't sure whether that was a good sign or bad. Itachi himself was actually rather catlike, Fugaku realized upon consideration, so maybe that explained some of it.

After Itachi promised to stay in the house with 'Neko-san,' as the cat had been temporarily dubbed, Fugaku attempted to make some more progress on the paperwork that had taken over his office. However, he didn't get very far. If he had rushed, he would have made more progress, but he had never been one to do less than his best work, even in a task such as this, so he had only gone through four more reports when he heard the front door bang open.

"Otou-san, I'm back!" Sasuke called from the entry. "I've got something I'm supposed to show you!"

Sighing a little, Fugaku resigned himself to the fact that at this rate the paperwork would take two or three months to complete and headed back into the front of the house.

"Where'd the cat come from, Nii-chan?" Sasuke was saying as Fugaku walked in.

"Sasuke, I wouldn't—" Fugaku said quickly, but he was too late as Sasuke reached out to pet the cat and failed to pull his hand away in time.

"Ow!" Sasuke yelped.

"Sorry, Sasuke-san," Itachi said quickly, picking up the cat and holding it tightly. "Neko-san won't do it again," he added, glancing guiltily at Fugaku.

Fugaku could still remember the cat that Mikoto's parents had owned. Mikoto had adored it, and it tolerated her (and occasionally other people, when they were useful or holding food). For some reason it had made Fugaku its target during the entirety of his and Mikoto's courtship. Fugaku didn't believe that this cat would turn out any differently, but he wasn't about to let Itachi know that. If Itachi figured out that they didn't like the cat, he would probably get rid of it no matter how much he himself wanted to keep it.

"We're ninjas, Itachi," he pointed out. "I'm sure we can deal with a cat." Considering the training most Konoha genin received in their dealings with the infamous Tora, this was true in more ways than one. "What did you have to show me, Sasuke?"

"Oh, right," Sasuke said, ceasing his rueful inspection of the scratches on his hand and pulling a folded paper out of his pocket. "Kakashi gave it to us this morning. We need to get someone to sign it, since we'll be leaving the village."

Fugaku scanned the paper, but didn't need to look any farther than the first lines. "It's time for the Chuunin Exams again already?"

"Yes, so won't you sign it, please?"

Fugaku frowned thoughtfully. "The Exams are dangerous." Even more so this time around, since they were being held in Iwa. It had been several years since the war, but feelings still ran hot when Konoha and Iwa ninja ran into each other, even during a time of truce such as the Chuunin Exams. A Konoha genin team could probably expect to be made a target, and as injury and accidental death were commonplace during the Exams nothing would be done about it.

"Oh, come on!" Sasuke wheedled. "Kakashi said we're good enough. We've even been on an _A-ranked_ mission!"

Both of these statements were true. Kakashi had a tendency to be a little overly ambitious, as this was the first team he was mentoring. However, the fact that Team 7 had come through a_ post facto_ A-ranked mission and survived probably meant that they could at least do the same for the Exams.

"All right," Fugaku said. "Go find me a pen."

Just as he was sitting down at the kitchen table to sign the papers, there was a knock on the door. At this rate, Fugaku would never get anything done. "Itachi, could you go see who that is?" he asked, starting to sign his name only to discover that the pen was out of ink. "And Sasuke, go get another pen."

Sasuke returned with a new pen as Itachi came back into the room with the visitor.

"Kaito-san!" Fugaku exclaimed in surprise, taking a few seconds to sign the entry form before standing. "How did you manage to get away? You were still cloistered in the evidence room when I left; you couldn't have catalogued everything this quickly."

Kaito shrugged. "None of it is particularly hot, so I might as well sort it tomorrow as today. Also, I had the impression that you had some paperwork you wanted to be distracted from...?"

"I wouldn't quite put it that way," Fugaku said.

"Nevertheless, you need distracting, and I would be glad to provide that service," Kaito said blithely, seating himself at the table opposite Fugaku. "You might start by making lunch."

Fugaku sighed. Kaito was still as facetious as he had been when they were both younger and he had been giving Fugaku advice (usually very bad) on how to impress girls—Fugaku had always ended up providing lunch then as well. Still, Kaito was usually good company. "All right," Fugaku said, "but you need to get Shisui to start cooking for you one of these days."

"Shisui?" Kaito laughed. "He's busier than I am." At this point, Kaito noticed the new addition to Fugaku's household. "Hey, where'd that come from?" he asked. "I thought you swore you'd never—"

"Ssh!" Fugaku hissed. He wasn't sure where Itachi was (he and Sasuke had both wandered off after the grown-ups started talking), but he didn't want him to find out that Fugaku didn't like cats. "If you must know, Neko-san is a special case. Now, since you invited yourself over so suddenly, I'm not going to make anything fancy."

...

Fugaku wasn't sure how it worked, but whenever he started cooking for anyone outside his immediate family, other people promptly started turning up. By the time he had finished fixing lunch there were six visitors and a general festive atmosphere. Itachi was nowhere to be seen, having probably holed up somewhere with Neko-san to avoid the strangers. Sasuke had also left, presumably to wherever Itachi was.

"So, how is Itachi getting along?" Akira asked after Fugaku had finished handing out plates of tempura. After Fugaku's partial retirement to care for Sasuke, Akira was the highest ranking active-duty police officer, as well as uncontested king of breakroom Go. "I saw him poking around one of the storehouses earlier—have you managed to get him to leave the house?"

"I've been trying, but nothing much came of it until this morning," Fugaku replied. "He brought a stray cat home."

"You know how that's going to end," Haruto, one of the up-and-coming forensics personnel, began. "My Toshiko brought a puppy home from the Academy last year. Now she has three, not to mention six turtles and the koi that she's keeping in a wading pool in the cellar."

Fugaku shrugged. "I can't say I'd exactly mind, if it was good for him."

"Sure, you can say that now, but wait until you try to get out a plate and grab a turtle instead."

"Have you thought about putting him on a team?" Kaito asked, rescuing Fugaku from the necessity of replying to Haruto's statement.

"I've considered it," Fugaku said. "But he would hardly belong on a beginner team, and none of the more advanced teams have openings." And honestly, although he wasn't about to say so, he worried that Itachi's lack of communication skills would get him in trouble if he had to interact with anyone outside his immediate family and the one or two other individuals he occasionally dared to approach. Itachi's passive, timid personality could easily be misinterpreted, especially in the sort of situations a ninja team would inevitably get into.

"Inuzuka Tsume's team is looking for a third member," Obito interjected quietly. "They...lost one in the Chuunin exams last year."

Fugaku could remember hearing something like that, and promptly began worrying about what could happen to Sasuke and his teammates again. They were so young to be in such a high-stakes struggle. Tsume's three had been relatively experienced.

"I could hardly go up to her and ask if she would consider Itachi as a replacement," Fugaku pointed out. Tsume would not take that well, and when Tsume did not take something well it was always unpleasant for whoever she took it from.

Obito nodded. "I could ask Kakashi to make inquiries, if you were interested. He might be able to get something done..."

Before Fugaku could reply, the door opened and Itachi entered, carrying a very heavy-looking tray. "Itachi, you really shouldn't—" Fugaku began, as Itachi knelt and began to hand out cups of tea. Itachi started to look hurt, and Fugaku quickly backtracked, something that he had been getting better and better at lately. "—it looks wonderful, though. Thank you."

Itachi smiled silently and continued handing out tea as Fugaku sighed with relief that he'd managed to skirt an unpleasant episode yet again. Trying to navigate Itachi's sensitivities could be harrowing at times.

Due to Itachi's submissive mannerisms, long hair, and preference for loose clothing, there was some confusion among those who had never heard him speak—therefore most of the population of Konoha—as to whether Fugaku's elder child was a boy or a girl. Fugaku had never attempted to do anything about this, since he preferred to keep Itachi out of the public eye as much as possible, and the less known about him the better. If he were ever to attempt to put him on a team, however, he might have to change that policy.

Before the tea was gone, the conversation had meandered off of the subject of families and to another topic that ninjas, especially those affiliated with clans, loved discussing: politics.

"Think there's much chance of Danzou retiring anytime soon?" Haruto asked after a few minutes.

Akira half-laughed. "Him? He's probably going to die before retiring, and that will most likely take another ten years or so, worse luck."

Danzou was one of the greatest barriers for peaceful relations between the Uchiha and the rest of the village. While some of his accusations had been true a couple of decades ago, a more honest man would have given up this vendetta by now. Whether or not he actually believed what he was saying was somewhat ambiguous at this point, but it was still damaging.

"I must say, we'd certainly all be a lot better off without Danzou around to get in the way," Fugaku remarked as Itachi took his empty teacup. "Pity we can't do anything about it."

Once all the tea was gone, Itachi quietly stacked the teacups back on the tray and slid the door open to leave. "No, Neko-san, you can't go in there," Fugaku heard him say just after the door closed. "They're busy."

If it would help Itachi to talk more, Fugaku would be willing to put up with any number of pets. Sasuke would probably not share this opinion (he and Itachi were still in the same room) but at least he hadn't complained yet.

[A/N: Now I'm getting ideas for a cutesy story about Fugaku and Mikoto's courtship...]


	2. Chapter 2

[A/N: This is the first time Sasuke's had POV. What do you think?]

Chapter 2:  
>Sasuke didn't leave for training the next day, as Kakashi had let his team off so they could pack for the trip to Iwa. This meant that Fugaku could sequester himself with the paperwork without having to worry about what Itachi was up to (or not), but also meant that Sasuke had to deal with Neko-san trying to get at the stuff he was trying to pack. It wouldn't have been so bad with a normal cat, but whenever Sasuke tried to pick Neko-san up and move him somewhere else, he got scratched, and he didn't want to confront Itachi about how troublesome his pet was being.<p>

Sasuke really did like his older brother, even if had taken a while to get used to having him around. Still, dealing with him could be very difficult at times; Sasuke had to be careful since Itachi could easily take very minor things the wrong way. After being rescued from his kidnappers several months ago, Itachi didn't seem quite so afraid of being thrown out or abandoned again, which made things a little easier. Every once in a while, however, the two of them would end up in a painfully one-sided spat which Sasuke usually felt horribly guilty about afterwards. Unfortunately, Itachi was often very hard to apologize to, since he usually assumed that he was the one in the wrong no matter how obvious it was that this was untrue.

Luckily, Itachi wasn't in the room right now, so Sasuke finally grabbed Neko-san (in the method Naruto had perfected for subduing Tora with minimal injury) and deposited the cat outside the room, closing the door firmly before the horrid creature could dart back in. That done, he set back to work on his packing. Iwa was very hot during the summer, but it still got cold at night. This made deciding what to pack difficult, especially considering that he and his teammates were going to be outside a lot of the time.

After debating internally for a few moments, he put his handheld videogame console in the backpack, wrapped in a sweater so it wouldn't get damaged. Of course he wouldn't be able to use it during the exams, but it would be nice to have on the trip.

Just as he was beginning to think he might be able to get it all done that day, the door opened again. Sasuke quickly prepared to defend his underwear from an intrusive feline, but luckily Neko-san was currently being carried by Itachi.

Closing the door silently, Itachi walked over to where Sasuke was and gracefully knelt beside him. "Sasuke-san," he said quietly, keeping his head down so that there was no chance of his meeting Sasuke's eyes, "I would like to ask you a question."

"Uh, sure..." Sasuke replied, wondering what this was about. He hated it when Itachi addressed him so formally; it made him remember the first few days when he'd treated him so spitefully. "What did you want to ask?"

"Sasuke-san, who is Danzou?"

"Danzou?" Sasuke was a little confused by the random topic of the question. "Where did you hear about him?" Itachi shrugged but did not reply, so Sasuke didn't press him. Danzou wasn't exactly an uncommon topic around the Uchiha compound. "Danzou is a member of the Hokage's council of advisors," Sasuke started to explain as he continued packing. "A couple of decades back, before Otou-san became the head of the clan, he found evidence that the Uchiha were plotting to take over the village. Nothing ever came of it, but he's been prejudiced against the Uchiha ever since. He hasn't really tried anything, yet, but there's all kinds of rumours... don't tell Otou-san I told you all this, okay? He tries to be discreet about this stuff since he thinks I'm still a kid or something."

"I won't tell anyone, Sasuke-san," Itachi said, and Sasuke knew that once he had promised he would rather die than tell. Sasuke promptly felt uncomfortably responsible, although for what he wasn't exactly sure.

Itachi, meanwhile, was still petting Neko-san, who had not made any sort of attempt to get out of Itachi's tight hold. Sasuke was rather surprised by the sort of treatment the cat tolerated from Itachi, considering that he wouldn't let anyone else so much as touch him. While Itachi was clearly pleased with his new pet, he did seem a little at a loss as to what he could do with Neko-san. In hopes of helping out in this regard, Sasuke took a break from his packing and began rummaging through his closet for something that could be used as a cat toy.

It very quickly became obvious that Sasuke's closet was in bad need of a cleaning; if it hadn't been for the fire several months ago he would probably have been buried as soon as he opened it, due to his habit of tossing things in there and then forgetting about them. After dredging through several layers, he still hadn't found anything that would suit his purposes.

"Do you need any help, Sasuke-san?"

Sasuke jumped a little as Itachi suddenly spoke from right behind him. He really should have been used to it by now, since they were sharing a room, but the sheer silence with which Itachi could move still took him by surprise sometimes. "No, I'm fine, Nii-chan," he said, starting to poke through another shelf full of miscellaneous junk. He wasn't sure how he'd ended up with a lot of it, but was pretty sure that Naruto was responsible. Naruto had a tendency to pick up all kinds of things while they were on a mission, and those tended to migrate into his teammates' possession. "Hey, here's something."

Shoving everything else back onto the shelves, Sasuke forced the closet closed and turned back to Itachi, who was watching him curiously. "Nii-chan, see if Neko-san will play with this," Sasuke said, handing Itachi what he had found. It was a slightly dented little bell on a red string; probably it had originally been a charm of some kind, but it would definitely do to entertain a cat.

...

Fugaku sighed with relief as he finally signed off on the last report and set it in the pile he had completed. Now that he was done with that, he could turn his mind to other things. He was still apprehensive about Sasuke travelling to the Chuunin exams, and also a little worried about Itachi being left mostly by himself during Sasuke's absence.

He was also giving a great deal of thought to the conversation he had had with his visitors the day before. It might do Itachi a great deal of good to be on a ninja team, but on the other hand he didn't want to push Itachi into anything, and it was often difficult to tell whether or not Itachi wanted to do something.

If Itachi thought Fugaku wanted him to do something, he would do so without giving the slightest inkling of his own opinion. While Fugaku had gradually gotten better at reading his oldest child, he still had difficulty telling whether Itachi was truly willing or merely making a pretense of it.

All at once, he had a thought that might take care of several of his problems simultaneously. The only question was what the boys would think of it. Wanting to find this out as quickly as possible, Fugaku took a few seconds to straighten up the papers before heading to Sasuke and Itachi's room. After tapping discreetly on the doorframe (Itachi startled easily and Fugaku had quickly figured out that it was unwise to barge in on him) Fugaku slid the door open.

He was a bit surprised by what he saw. Neko-san was practically dancing on his hind legs, trying to get at a small bell that Itachi was dangling over the cat's face. Sasuke was watching from the safe haven of the chair in front of his desk, but didn't seem worried about any kind of imminent feline assault.

Some things hadn't changed, however. Neko-san dropped to the floor and hissed as Fugaku entered, and Itachi quickly picked up the cat, holding it protectively against himself. Fugaku was careful not to show any signs of being upset with the cat's behaviour; he didn't want to give Itachi any cause to worry about his pet's welfare. "You two certainly look like you're having fun," Fugaku said, closing the door behind him. "Can I interrupt you for a bit?"

"Sure," Sasuke said, vacating the chair and pushing some of the clothes that were on the floor to the side so that the room didn't look quite so much like a laundromat that had been hit by a tornado. Sasuke was never very neat while packing, and a longer trip only compounded the problem. "Is this about the Exams or something?"

Fugaku had hoped to bring up the subject a little more gradually, but he hadn't expected Sasuke to be so astute. Sometimes he forgot that Sasuke was a genin and almost grown up by now. "Yes, actually, that's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. Itachi, how would you like to go to Iwa with Sasuke and his team?"

Itachi didn't reply immediately, and Fugaku quickly began mentally going over what he had just said, trying to figure out what could be taken the wrong way.

"You... wish to send me away?" Itachi said finally in a shaky voice.

Fugaku hadn't been expecting that much of a misunderstanding. "No, of course not," he said quickly. "I wouldn't make you leave if you didn't want to. It's just that you haven't been out of the village since you got here, and I thought you might like going with Sasuke instead of being here by yourself while he's gone. It's your choice."

Itachi relaxed slightly, but Fugaku could tell that he was still uneasy. "How long would it be?"

"It varies," Fugaku began, "but generally the Exams take about five weeks. There and back would be another week both ways. You don't have to decide now, they won't be leaving until the day after tomorrow."

Itachi shook his head, seemingly having come to a decision. "I would like to go," he said, quietly but firmly.

Fugaku sighed with relief; he had worried that his miscommunication would put Itachi off of going outside the village for the forseeable future. "I'm sure you'll like it," Fugaku said. "Sasuke, why don't you help him pack?"

...

The rest of the afternoon passed quietly. Sasuke and Itachi worked on getting things ready for the trip while Fugaku made dinner in the kitchen. He had considered just making a couple of frozen dinners before remembering the scoldings he used to get from Mikoto—'Ninjas need real food, not that frozen junk!' she would insist. She had even taught him to prepare udon (his first cooking endeavor) so Sasuke wouldn't 'starve' the next time she had a mission.

Fugaku forced himself to stop reminiscing before he got too much farther. It hadn't been long after that when he and Sasuke had been left to fend for themselves entirely.

Sasuke spent most of the time at the dinner table telling Itachi in great detail what his teammates were like, and Fugaku listened with interest as well. Apparently Sasuke's opinions had changed since earlier in his genin career; he was not nearly as dismissive of Sakura, and although he still thought Naruto was annoying, he gave him credit for at least competency, if not more. With someone of Sasuke's standoffish personality, that was practically admitting they were best friends, although Fugaku knew better than to make any remarks to that effect.

Because of the trip coming up, Fugaku instructed the boys to retire early before leaving to take a tour of the compound as the sun set. He had intended for it to only be a quick walk to make sure nothing out of the ordinary was going on, but he ended up having to listen to a very long complaint from a housewife about a couple of academy students who had broken a window. And as Fugaku, as head of the clan, couldn't do what he really wanted to do and tell her to shut up so he could get home and have some tea, it was almost half an hour before he got away from her, and it was pitch black out by the time he returned to the house.

Sasuke was asleep, but Itachi's futon had clearly not been touched. This was a surprise; Fugaku had actually been expecting it the other way around. Itachi was not in the library, either, his usual favorite spot. When he failed to find Itachi anywhere else in the house, Fugaku began to worry.

Actually finding someone as instinctively stealthy as Itachi was always difficult, so Fugaku sat on the back porch to wait a while for Itachi's return before doing something that might be overreacting. Itachi could have just stepped out momentarily (although admittedly this would be somewhat out of character for him) and managed to not cross paths with Fugaku.

Another hour passed, and Fugaku had just decided that he had better start looking when he heard a soft click from around the corner of the house, where the window of the boys' bedroom was. By the time he reached the spot, the window was already closed again, so he raced inside and flung open the bedroom door. "What's going—Itachi?" he cut off as he turned the light on and recognized the other person in the room.

Itachi didn't reply. He had backed up against the wall when the door opened and was staring fearfully at Fugaku, clutching Neko-san in his arms. The cat did not look at all pleased at the commotion.

Sasuke had stirred at the sudden noise and now sat up drowsily. "Otou-san? What happened?"

"I'm not sure exactly," Fugaku said, relaxing now that he knew they were not in any danger. "What were you doing out of the house, Itachi?"

"N-neko-san wanted to go outside," Itachi stammered guiltily.

"So you went out through the window?" Fugaku asked, looking Itachi up and down to see if there was any evidence of where he might have been. His clothes were damp, so he might have been at the riverbank just outside the compound. Fugaku had been encouraging Itachi to be a little more independent, but this was a bit sudden.

"It was more convenient," Itachi replied, a little more calmly now although he still seemed edgy.

Fugaku decided not to push the issue and stress Itachi further. "That's all right, then, I suppose. Next time, be sure to let me know before you leave."

Itachi nodded obediently, and Fugaku, convinced that at least no more strange things were going to happen tonight, turned the light off before leaving the room. Itachi's behaviour had been puzzling, but Fugaku hoped it was a good sign; taking initiative wasn't a bad thing, Itachi had just chosen the wrong time for it.

[A/N: Thanks to Rose202 for betaing! :-)]


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

"So...you're sure you have everything?"

Sasuke sighed. "Yes, Otou-san, I have everything, just like I did the last three times you asked."

"And Itachi, you're all right?"

Itachi nodded. "I am fine, Otou-sama."

Fugaku noted Itachi's switch to the more formal honorific, but decided that it was probably just because of the incident last night where Fugaku had surprised Itachi climbing back into his room through the window. Although Fugaku had tried to assure him over breakfast that morning that he hadn't done anything wrong, Itachi still seemed edgy about it. As a result, Fugaku's protective tendencies had gone into overdrive.

"All right then," Fugaku said, finally satisfied that Sasuke and Itachi had packed enough to at least survive the trip. "I'll walk you to the gate," he added quickly, as Sasuke turned to go with Itachi obligingly following.

"We're going to be late," Sasuke pointed out, still headed for the door.

"Yes, so you might actually get there at the same time as Kakashi, for once," Fugaku replied. "You aren't even supposed to leave until noon, there's plenty of time."

Sasuke shrugged, but waited for Fugaku to catch up to him before opening the door.

Konoha summers were always hot, but there was a pleasant breeze coming off the river. It would be a good day for travelling.

Itachi paused suddenly as they neared the gate. "Please wait just a moment, Otou-sama!" he said quickly before darting back to their house. Fugaku and Sasuke waited in confusion until he ran back to them, an annoyed-looking feline in his arms.

"Nii-chan, are you sure...?" Sasuke began, stepping back so that he was out of Neko-san's scratching range.

"Neko-san won't cause any trouble," Itachi said pleadingly. "I...I don't think he'd be happy if he didn't get to go."

Fugaku doubted that Neko-san was ever happy about anything, but he did think that the horrid little beast would be even more of a terror without Itachi's calming influence. "Yes, go ahead and take him," he said. He briefly considered recommending putting the cat in a basket, but decided that the danger of wrestling the creature into one would outweigh the slightly higher safety factor later.

Sasuke looked a little nervous at the new addition to their party, but didn't say anything, although he did walk on the other side of Fugaku on the way to the city gate. Itachi appeared oblivious to Sasuke's apprehension as he caressed his now deceptively docile pet.

The day was clear with a few bright white clouds, standing in high contrast with the deep blue of the summer sky. The sun shone down boldly, but a light breeze cut down the heat so that it was quite pleasant. Ninjas were not the only ones taking advantage of the agreeable weather, of course. The market was doing even better business than usual, and several groups of civilian children were playing tag and other such games in the street.

When Fugaku arrived at the gate, Naruto and Sakura were waiting but there was no sign of Kakashi. Fugaku forced down his momentary irritation at the other Jounin; Kakashi's lazy habits could get annoying at times, but things had been much better between them since they had worked together to rescue Itachi. Kakashi had even served as a sort of liaison between the Uchiha police force and the village shinobi at times, which had helped solve some potentially very sticky cases much more quickly.

"Sasuke!" Naruto shouted, running over as they approached. "We thought Kakashi-sensei would get here before you. Oh, um, hello, Uchiha-san," he continued with a perfunctory little bow in Fugaku's general direction. Fugaku was sure that the child was not trying to be rude, just too exuberant to bother much with formalities. "Hey, Sasuke, is this your brother?" Naruto added, looking at Itachi but not getting too close, clearly worried about the cat.

"Yes," Sasuke said. "Itachi-nii-chan, this is Naruto."

"Naruto-san," Itachi said, bowing as deeply as he could while holding the cat. Sasuke was relieved that he hadn't said '-sama'; that would have been really hard to explain.

Naruto didn't seem to take heed of how uncomfortably formal Itachi was being. "Sasuke's told us lots about you," he announced blithely, and Sasuke winced, hoping his teammate wouldn't remember the shameful things he had said the first time he'd told them about Itachi.

He had been furious then, at his father for deceiving him for all his life and at Itachi for merely _existing_and being a rival for his father's affections. Itachi's behaviour hadn't made Sasuke think any better of him; he was an Uchiha and that he should act as if he was no better than a dog was a disgrace to the clan. The next time Sasuke had been training with Team 7 he had said some frankly horrible things about him, and if Itachi were to hear of it now it would hurt him terribly.

Luckily, Naruto didn't expand on his statement, and Kakashi arrived before the conversation could go any farther. Fugaku explained the situation and his desire for Itachi to join the party, and Kakashi quickly agreed, although Sasuke could tell he was a bit doubtful about the cat.

Kakashi and his charges would walk to the postal town of Yubin, where most of Konoha's ninja-civilian contact went on, and there hire horses to take them the rest of the way to Iwa. This would mean that Team 7 would be fresher going into the exams.

As Sasuke was about to follow Kakashi and his teammates out the gate, Fugaku took his arm and pulled him aside. "Please take care of your brother on the trip," he said seriously.

Sasuke nodded, and Fugaku smiled before squeezing his shoulder affectionately and pushing him gently towards the gate.

...

Fugaku had been worried that at the last minute Itachi would refuse to leave, but although he did look back a few times he did not look too terribly concerned at being out of the shelter of the familiar house in the compound. Just to make sure, however, Fugaku watched them until they were out of sight.

Once he could no longer see Team 7, Fugaku headed for the market. With Sasuke out of the house, he could finally cook some of the things that he liked and Sasuke didn't, and he intended to take full advantage of that.

He was browsing through some imported spices when he sensed someone following him. As he tried to ascertain whether the chakra was from a friendly source or not, Fugaku discreetly shifted his stance so that he could reach his shuriken quickly if it became necessary. He had not been expecting any incidents, so his twin swords were still at home, in their place of honor on the wall of his office.

Fugaku's tail suddenly appeared in front of him, and Fugaku nearly pulled a weapon before relaxing as he saw the porcelain animal mask. "Anbu-san," he greeted. Fugaku knew who it was behind the mask—Uzuki Yuugao, a very promising kunoichi—but for the sake of discretion refrained from using her real name. "I take it you want something from me, or you wouldn't have been following me for the past half-hour."

"That is true, Uchiha-san," Yuugao replied. "The Hokage desires to speak to you. You will come at once." There was no conversation in her tone; it was clear that this was not a request, and Fugaku forsook his shopping to take to the rooftops after her, wondering what the Hokage could want now.

Itachi and Sasuke were both well, so the Hokage could have nothing to complain about on that score. True, Itachi was rarely seen by anyone outside the Uchiha compound (and honestly not that often inside either) but that was because Itachi liked to stay away from people, not because Fugaku was trying to hide him.

There was also the possibility of the Hokage's wanting to know about something pertaining to the police force. This was somewhat doubtful, as there were currently no big cases being worked on.

When they arrived at the Hokage tower, Fugaku hurried up the stairs to the Hokage's office in order to find out what was going on as quickly as possible. Entering the office he noticed with some surprise that Obito was sitting in a chair towards the side of the room, flanked by two more ANBU who Fugaku didn't recognize. Had Obito gotten himself in trouble? Kakashi's former teammate had always been a little too outspoken, but if he ever caused an incident Fugaku had assumed it would be with the Uchiha, not the village.

"What is the meaning of this summons, Hokage-dono?" Fugaku asked, trying not to appear too agitated.

"I'll come to that in a moment," the Hokage said. He sounded stern and a little disappointed, a combination that set Fugaku on edge. "Where were you between nine-thirty and eleven last night?"

Fugaku frowned, wondering what could be behind this. At that time last night, he had been searching through the house for Itachi and then sitting around waiting to see if he would return on his own. "I was at home," he replied.

"Can anyone verify this?"

"No," Fugaku answered, a little annoyed at being interrogated like this. "Sasuke and Itachi were both in bed. I would like to know what the meaning of all this is before answering any more questions, if you please."

"Very well," the Hokage said. "I believe we can show you."

He gestured toward the ANBU agents, who escorted both Obito and Fugaku from the tower.

"Do you know what is going on, Obito-kun?" Fugaku asked quietly. While the area was familiar, he couldn't identify the route they were taking yet; they could be heading for any one of the buildings in the administrative district.

"I have been ordered not to tell you anything, Fugaku-dono," Obito hedged. It was clear from his tone that if there hadn't been witnesses present he would have told anyway.

Fugaku didn't press him; it didn't seem like Obito was the one in trouble at the moment. That still did leave the question of why Fugaku was being treated with such suspicion, though.

Their party stopped in front of what Fugaku recognized as the building containing the public archives and the counselors' offices. Fugaku immediately began to get a bad feeling about the situation; well, worse than he had had before, anyway. Had Danzou managed to get an angle on the Uchiha at last?

As they headed inside, the first thing Fugaku was aware of, other than the fact that the building was strangely deserted, was the smell. At first, it was only a mild infraction of Fugaku's senses, but as they headed through one of the silent hallways to an office that Fugaku was well acquainted with (even though he had rarely been inside) it became much stronger and more recognizable.

Fugaku hadn't encountered this particular scent in quite some time, but it was not one that was easily forgotten. It was difficult to describe, but instantly identifiable. Someone had died here, and died horribly.

One of the ANBU opened the office door, and Fugaku saw exactly who and how. Or rather, exactly how. He had to deduce who; it was probably no longer possible to identify precisely who except perhaps through dental records, but Fugaku knew whose office this was.

The entirety of the room had been charred—there was still heat radiating off the blackened walls, and Fugaku could see studs in some places, making him doubt the stability of the structure. One of the windows had shattered from the heat, which was probably what had tipped people off to the fact that something was wrong.

What was left of the desk which had originally occupied the center of the room was propped up against the wall near the door. It did seem that there had been a bit of a fight, however one-sided, so it had likely gotten thrown to the side during the proceedings.

The body was lying underneath the window, a few fallen shuriken beside it; the dead man had probably been in the act of drawing a spread of projectiles. That this had been futile was obvious, as his head was in the corner several feet away. That had been burned more than anything else, but it was still possible to tell that one side of the face had been bandaged.

Obito looked rather ill, but Fugaku had some trouble keeping a straight face as he turned to one of the ANBU. "Do you know when the funeral is going to be?" he asked.

He had been looking forward to dancing on Danzou's grave for a long time.

[A/N: This is probably the most T-rated thing I've ever written, for which I suppose I should apologize but I'm not exactly sorry...did I kill Danzou off thoroughly enough? I'm sure some of you have been looking forward to something like this.]


	4. Chapter 4

[A/N: I actually wrote this a while back but am just now posting it; I haven't written on this in quite some time. I want to get back to working on the Cruel World universe, but it might take me some time to get my feel back for it again.]

Chapter 4:

Kakashi frowned thoughtfully as he turned to survey his little group. While Fugaku had given him a little advance notice that Itachi would be joining them, he hadn't had enough time to give much thought to what that would entail. While Sasuke's older brother seemed alright for now, Kakashi didn't know how long that would last as they got further from Konoha. Still, considering what had happened the first time Itachi had been left at home by himself, Fugaku was right to take steps to ensure he would be supervised.

However, Kakashi couldn't help but worry a little that having another person along might be a bit of a distraction. In a potentially life-and-death competition like the Exams, even a little thing could prove to be enough to take someone's mind off the most important thing—namely survival—just long enough to prove fatal. From the careful attention Sasuke was paying to his older brother Kakashi had to take that into account as an added risk.

Naruto and Sakura seemed to be less interested in the new addition to their group, but that could be attributed to them being wary enough of the cat to keep their distance.

It was a nice day for travelling; not too hot even though it was the middle of summer, enough of a breeze to be pleasant without causing trajectory issues, and even a few clouds to pretty things up. The road to Yubin ran partially in the open like this and later on through the forests Konoha was famous for.

Kakashi wondered if Itachi had travelled through this area before. If he had been sent from the mountain headquarters that Kakashi and Fugaku had raided in the spring he might have, although from that distance there were any number of routes he could have taken.

Turning to glance over his group again, Kakashi noted that Itachi had drifted to the back and that while Sasuke seemed to have noticed, he had remained a few yards ahead, engrossed in a conversation with Naruto. Kakashi caught the words 'scoring mechanics' and 'so_ cool_' and concluded they were talking about video games. He could think of more edifying topics, but at least his two hot-headed boys weren't bickering as was too often their custom on missions.

"Itachi," Kakashi called quietly. "Come up here and walk with me." It wouldn't do any good to have the most vulnerable member of their group in an easily ambushed position. Of course, Itachi probably wasn't exactly vulnerable—he could certainly hold his own in a fight—but Kakashi knew his mind worked a bit differently and that added risk.

Itachi practically materialized next to him, and Kakashi barely managed not to show his surprise. Compared to his students' skilled but still not quite perfect stealth, Itachi's near-inhuman silence was a little unnerving. The teenager was barely even leaving any footprints on the path. "Do you wish something, Kakashi-san?" Itachi asked, his voice even and formal. His head was tipped slightly down, at just the right angle that his heavy bangs hid his eyes.

"Just company," Kakashi said with an easy shrug. Itachi gracefully fell into step with him but did not say anything more, preferring to pay attention to the cat. Kakashi eyed the creature warily. He did not like cats very much—few Konoha shinobi did—and this particular one looked like an especially unpleasant specimen. Kakashi wondered why it was tolerating Itachi's rather cluelessly rough handling of it so tamely.

"What's Iwa like, Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura asked after they had been walking all through the morning and into the early afternoon. Since it was summer, it still wouldn't get dark until quite late—probably after they reached Yubin—but the shadows created by the trees were beginning to get longer.

Kakashi paused a little as he thought of a reply. He was rather glad of a topic for conversation; everyone had really been surprisingly quiet. "It's all right, I suppose. I was stationed there for a little while after the war, though, so I haven't seen at its best. Let's see...they had one of the best used bookstores I've ever been to. Excellent selection, it had _shelves _of—"

"I meant," Sakura hurriedly interrupted to clarify, "the weather and stuff."

"That was nice too, most of the time. Not so much in summer, since there isn't much shade; trees are hard to grow there. It gets quite windy at times, as well."

"Hey, hey, do they have ramen?" Naruto asked eagerly.

"Plenty," Kakashi assured him. "In fact, there are several types that you can only find in Iwa."

"Awesome!" Naruto cheered. "Hey, Sasuke, if I beat you to that bend will you treat me when we get there?"

"No," Sasuke said firmly, not even looking up. Kakashi thought Sasuke was a little too focused on the ground at times, but he had had a nasty run-in with a tripwire and some explosive tags (Konohamaru had sworn up and down that he hadn't known they were really explosive) a few missions ago so it was only to be expected. Kakashi decided he should probably bring it up before the Exams began, but for now it didn't seem to be affecting his perception in other areas.

"It's not like you ever buy anything when we're on missions," Naruto pointed out. "Why can't you—"

"Naruto," Sasuke said with exaggerated calm, "We are going to the Chuunin Exams. It is not—repeat _not_—a Ramen Tour, no matter what you may think." Sasuke usually got on quite well with his more boisterous teammate, and off-duty they were the bane of Konoha's arcades, but Sasuke could go into Mission Mode whereas Naruto remained his usual happy-go-lucky self.

"Killjoy."

"Goof-off."

Neither of them sounded as if they meant what they said, but Kakashi thought he had better make sure they didn't start arguing just the same. "Hey, cut it out, you two. Let's pick up the pace a bit, we have a long way ahead of us."

...

The next thing Fugaku knew, he and Obito were back in the Hokage's office, apparently waiting to be questioned. Fugaku wouldn't be much help on that score, since he had absolutely no idea who could have killed Danzou, but he hoped they would be able to find out. Whoever it was, Fugaku had the notion he should send them flowers.

At the moment, they were alone in the room, as the Hokage and his staff were off talking to some of the investigators. Fugaku could tell by the chakra signatures that there were ANBU guards outside, however. He didn't like being treated with such suspicion.

"So, Obito-kun," he said finally, after casting a few wards to prevent eavesdropping; he and Obito probably still weren't supposed to be talking to each other and he didn't want to get the younger shinobi in trouble. "What is going on? Why are you here—they can't possibly suspect you of this?"

"Um, no," Obito said, sounding a little embarrassed as he fidgeted nervously with his eyepatch. "I'm...a witness, actually. Sorry."

Fugaku frowned. "Why apologize?"

Obito began to look confused. "You mean they haven't told you yet? You're the main suspect."

Fugaku was actually speechless for a few seconds. "What?" he gasped when he had regained some of his faculties. "It's never been a secret that I didn't like him, but—!"

"I was called into the Hokage's office earlier today," Obito began to explain. "He wanted to know what people had been saying about Danzou lately. I didn't know why he was asking yet, and it was an order, so I ended up telling him about the luncheon party last week."

"The luncheon—oh," Fugaku broke off, remembering what he had said. "It was just talk, though. None of us actually would have done anything."

"I know," Obito said. "That's what I told them, but I just...well, I just hope you can prove it."

"Indeed." There were many on the Hokage's council who were still suspicious of the Uchiha, and the one who had been threatening the clan suddenly turning up dead would certainly seem to point towards an Uchiha being responsible. The manner of Danzou's death wouldn't help any, either: Danzou had died by fire and a blade, both happening to often be Uchiha specialties.

The next few days were going to be very interesting indeed.

...

After several hours of walking, Team 7 reached Yubin without incident, which pleased Kakashi very much. He had been a little expecting to find a messenger hawk waiting at the inn he'd told Fugaku Team 7 would be staying at, asking for Itachi to return. After all, Fugaku was highly protective of his older son, and justifiably so—Sasori had not been proven dead after Itachi's rescue. True, nothing had been seen or heard of him since (Sasori's young compatriot, Deidara, had vanished as well), but considering that he was no longer exactly human Kakashi had very strong doubts that he was really gone. Perhaps Fugaku did not share this opinion, or thought that since they would not be going anywhere near Wind country Itachi would be safe. In any case, Kakashi didn't think anything was likely to happen during the Exams; it would be very bad form for the host village to allow anything to happen to their visitors.

Once a couple rooms had been rented out for the night, and arrangements made to hire horses for the rest of the trip, Kakashi turned to the business of getting his team fed and settled down for the night. They would have a few very long days before they arrived in Iwa, so it would be imperative that the team be as well-rested as possible before the real trip began.

Naruto, of course, begged for ramen. Despite Sasuke's protests that Naruto was obsessed and Kakashi shouldn't keep enabling him, Kakashi did eventually agree. Leaving Neko-san shut up in the bathroom of one of the rented rooms, Team 7 plus one headed into the area of Yubin where the best ramen could be found.

[A/N: Finally figured out the whole thing where Kakashi's genin team remained intact, so I'm starting to fit that in. At some point I'll put up an explanatory oneshot and edit Cruel World proper a little to match.]


	5. Chapter 5

[A/N: To clarify, 'Kakashi Gaiden' did not occur as such in this universe: the original Team 7 went on another mission before that would have happened, resulting in Kakashi losing an eye and Obito giving him the sharingan (the exact circumstances of which I'll probably write a story about later). They would have still been recovering from that at the time of Kakashi Gaiden, meaning a different team would have gone.]

Chapter 5:

Fugaku sighed, looking at the wrong side of prison bars for the second time in six months. And yet again, it was for a crime he had not committed, although in this case he had certainly wished for it.

He was fairly sure that the Hokage did not actually believe him guilty of Danzou's assassination. However, with the rest of the council clamoring for something to be done in response, the Hokage had ordered him jailed—and admittedly, Fugaku knew that his recent statements and the manner of Danzou's death did make him a very likely suspect.

Hopefully this business would be settled by the time Kakashi returned home with Sasuke and Itachi, though; Sasuke would probably do something rash and Itachi would most likely think it was somehow his fault.

Leaning back against the hard stone wall, Fugaku began to run through the list of other possible culprits, wondering who had actually done it.

Obito had been present at the luncheon party, but while he was likely capable of something like this, Fugaku doubted he would ever dream of doing so. He didn't owe the Uchiha enough for that, considering their treatment of him after the results of the disastrous mission where he sacrificed an eye.

Kakashi was a marginally more likely possibility (while Kakashi didn't care much for the Uchiha, he had other things to dislike Danzou for), but if he had been the one to kill Danzou he would likely have used one of his fancy assassination jutsu and there had been no sign of Chidori or its variants in the ruined office. The timeframe was also a bit too close for Kakashi to be the culprit; Danzou had died only a short time before Team 7 left for the exams, while Kakashi should have been busy preparing.

The Hyuuga could also have had some role in the killing—as one of the two most powerful clans in Konoha they had good reason to be suspicious of Danzou and his anti-clan sentiment. However, if a Hyuuga had been responsible they would probably have just used their clan's hand-to-hand combat techniques rather than making such a mess of the place. To be honest, Fugaku rather hoped it hadn't been a Hyuuga who was responsible; he didn't really want to be indebted to his rival clan.

Kaito or Shisui were also potential suspects, Fugaku had to admit. Kaito had been at the luncheon party, and he and Shisui were both skilled enough to do away with Danzou (who, although elderly, had been a powerful shinobi in his day) and capricious enough to carry out a murder with only a vague suggestion serving as a catalyst. It just didn't sound like something they would do, though; Fugaku had thought he'd impressed enough sense on his cousin that Kaito would at least consult him a little more directly before taking such drastic action. Shisui was more likely to act on his own, perhaps to protect Sasuke and Itachi, who he practically regarded as his siblings. His concern for them had only increased recently, with Itachi's arrival and the subsequent attack on their home. While that was a valid possibility, Fugaku couldn't quite picture Shisui carrying out the brutal murder scene he had witnessed in Danzou's office.

Whoever had been responsible, Fugaku was hopeful that he would be able to clear himself before Team 7 and Itachi returned from their trip to Iwa.

…

"Are we there yet?"

"Thirty-seven…"

"No seriously, are we?"

"Thirty-eight…"

"Stop it, Sasuke, I just want to know where we are!"

"Sasuke-san…"

"It's okay, Nii-chan, he's always like that."

"Kakashi-sensei, how much further is it?"

Kakashi pulled his horse to a halt and motioned for the others to stop. "And finally someone asks me something I can answer in a relevant fashion. Thank you, Sakura." Sakura beamed at the praise and Naruto rolled his eyes. "Anyway, we're nearing the border of Earth Country: we'll stop just this side of it for the night, and if we start early enough in the morning we should reach Iwa by tomorrow afternoon."

"About time!" Naruto cheered. "I've had enough of horses." Naruto was not the most skilled of riders, and had even fallen a couple times. Kakashi theorized that part of the issue might be that horses could sense the Tailed Beast that Naruto bore within him and, being prey animals, were spooked by it.

Sakura was very competent at riding, as she was with most skills. Kakashi checked the state of her and her horse anyway but didn't find anything to comment on.

"Sasuke, are you and Itachi alright?" he asked, looking to the remaining horse and its riders. Since Itachi had little to no riding experience, he was sharing a horse with his brother and was currently perched behind Sasuke, holding Neko-san with one arm. If he was in any discomfort he was hiding it completely.

"We're fine," Sasuke said, but not without a nervous glance at the feline his brother clutched.

"Okay," Kakashi said. "It's only another couple hours to our stop, so let's move on."

…

"You don't have to do that, Nii-chan," Sasuke said with a yawn as he tried to stop Itachi from making the beds in their room the next morning.

Itachi decided to pretend he hadn't heard his brother _(not master, never again)_ and continued working. This Exam meant a lot to Sasuke and he wanted to do his best to be helpful; their father must have had something like that in mind when he had suggested Itachi go along. If he was doing what was best for Sasuke, Itachi felt he could push back a little against Sasuke's stated wishes.

Sasuke took a step forward, probably thinking to stop him physically, but halted when he saw Neko-san lounging in a strip of sunlight directly in his path. Itachi was glad Sasuke was taking such care not to frighten the former stray, but it would be nice if he would realize soon how nice Neko-san was so they could play with him together.

"Well, I guess it's okay," Sasuke said finally, turning to leave the room. "Make sure to come and get some breakfast."

"Yes, Sasuke-san," Itachi answered, not looking as he adjusted the final pillowcase to his liking. Apparently it was to Neko-san's liking as well, for the cat bounded up onto the bed as soon as Sasuke had closed the door. Itachi tried moving him off the pillow a couple times, but the cat pushed his hands away with soft paws and just looked so _comfortable_ curled up on the fluffed-up pillow that Itachi couldn't bear to move him.

Itachi smiled as he knelt by the bed to stroke Neko-san's soft gray fur. He liked having a pet: both Otou-sama and Sasuke were very kind (too kind sometimes) but sometimes their insistence on treating him as an equal was a little disconcerting.

Neko-san didn't pressure him. Neko-san was just Neko-san.

The cat fell asleep after a few minutes of petting, and Itachi left the hotel room in order to not disturb him. He had hoped to fetch some food from the hotel lobby and retreat outside to eat, but Kakashi and the others spotted him before this idea could come to fruition.

"Nii-chan, we're over here, come on!" Sasuke exclaimed, darting to his side and pulling him over to a small booth in one corner of the lobby.

Itachi did not immediately resist, but Sasuke's shout had made him the center of attention, to his discomfort. Kakashi pushed a plate of rolls across the table as they approached and motioned for the remaining two genin to scoot over. The booth could hardly have been meant for more than three people, and it would be very cramped with five. Itachi pulled against Sasuke's grip.

"You shouldn't...I'll eat over there—" he began to protest, but this only made Sasuke more insistent and a few moments later Itachi found himself penned in uncomfortably between Sasuke and his female teammate Sakura. If he had kept his mouth shut, he might have been able to slip away, but now there was no way out.

Sasuke had often mentioned his two teammates, but even on this trip Itachi had never been so close to them. Now both of them were staring at him curiously, and he lowered his head, letting his heavy bangs block them out.

"I'm going to get some coffee," Kakashi remarked in a tone that was just too deliberate to be casual. "Would you like some, Itachi?"

Itachi nodded minutely.

Kakashi had clearly intended his departure to be helpful but in fact in only made Itachi more uncomfortable as now there was nothing to distract the other two members of Team 7 from his presence.

"So you're Sasuke's big brother, huh?" Naruto said abruptly after swallowing a large bite of toast.

"Yes." Perhaps if he said something in response to their questioning they would leave him alone sooner.

"Are you a ninja too?" It was Sakura asking the question this time. Itachi couldn't remember being so close to a girl since he had been first apprehended and Kakashi's teammate Rin had examined him.

"I...sort of." While he had certainly done a ninja's work for his former master, Konoha had yet to use him as such. Even his own father never asked it of him, although Itachi paid attention to his wishes and did his best to serve him anyway.

"You don't have a forehead protector," Naruto noted, sounding doubtful. To claim to be a ninja without a forehead protector signifying loyalty to a village could be very dangerous, so Itachi could understand his suspicions. Indeed, he had no idea how to answer and Sasuke showed no inclination to save him: probably he wanted Itachi to 'make friends' with his teammates.

Luckily, he only had to sit in awkward silence for a few more seconds until Kakashi returned. "Here's your coffee, Itachi," he said, sliding one mug of the hot beverage across the table before sitting down to drink his own. The three members of Team 7 quickly returned their attention to their teacher, to Itachi's relief. He had begun to consider ducking under the table to escape the booth, which would certainly have embarrassed Sasuke.

Now that Kakashi had given him the coffee, however, Itachi wasn't quite sure what to do with it. He had only said 'yes' to Kakashi's suggestion because he thought it would be simpler than saying 'no'. In fact, he had never had coffee before—growing up with a master who didn't eat meant that he had lived on the cheapest and most simple foods available. Once Deidara arrived the food had improved, but Sasori's other operative had never shared his coffee.

Lifting the cup, Itachi took a brief, cautious sniff: it seemed harmless and actually smelled quite good so he sipped at it curiously. The taste was not as good as the smell, but it was not unpleasant and Itachi felt he could grow to like it.

"Hurry up and finish eating, kids," Kakashi ordered once he had finished about half his coffee. "We're leaving for Iwa as soon as we're done here."

[A/N: Hey, look what hasn't updated in ages! Sen/Itachi's aesthetic is somewhat based on Rurouni Kenshin, especially the way Satoh Takeru plays him, so since I finally watched the second RuroKen film I had a sudden rush of inspiration.]


	6. Chapter 6

[A/N: I have been binge-watching Pushing Daisies and now I'm hearing all my prose in the voice of the Narrator, which makes it hard to tell if I'm hitting the tone I want. I might come back and brush this up a bit later when my mental voiceover is a little more neutral.]

Chapter 6:

"Here we are in Iwa, gang!" Kakashi announced as the four Konoha ninja (plus one sort-of ninja who did not officially belong to Konoha) walked through the village gate, having left their horses at a waystation a short distance away.

Sakura stared up in awe at the massive carved rock spires that so much of the village was made up of. An office worker looking through a window in one of them noticed her gaping and waved down at her. "It's beautiful!" Sakura exclaimed as she waved back.

"Who cares what it looks like, I want to try the ramen," Naruto insisted.

"Are you back on that again? This is no time for—"

Kakashi swiftly moved to cut off Sasuke before he and Naruto could start arguing yet again. "This is indeed no time for ramen, but maybe we can have some after the orientation's over, how does that sound?"

Sasuke sighed but gave a long-suffering shrug. Itachi hovered a few inches behind him and said nothing, and Sakura smiled up at the office worker again before the Konoha group rounded the corner.

…

The bored office worker was not the only person to observe Kakashi and his followers as they arrived in Iwa. Himura Eiji was equally bored, but rather than working in a typical office, he worked in Iwa's Internal Security Department. When he reported to his superior five minutes later that the Konoha team had arrived, he expected the surveillance footage to be examined briefly and then forgotten about so he could take an early lunch.

This expectation was not realized. "Keep an eye on them!" his superior, Kaga Yukihana, ordered curtly after rewinding the footage for what must have been the seventh time.

"But what—"

"Classified," Yukihana snapped, seizing a nearby phone. "Maybe not for long though," she muttered as she jabbed in a number with slightly shaky fingers. "What are they trying to do, start another war? Hello? Hello? Hurry up and put me through!"

As Eiji scrambled to obey her gestured demands for pen and paper, he sighed internally as visions of an early lunch, or even a late lunch, vanished altogether.

…

"I brought you lunch."

Fugaku looked through the bars at the basket Shisui was holding. "Did you make it?" he asked, trying not to let his tone sound too doubtful although he knew full well Shisui, like his father, did not perform well in the kitchen.

"No, my kid sister did," Shisui said, holding the basket up to the bars to see if it would fit through. It wouldn't, so he lifted the cover and began passing Fugaku the separate elements. "How's it going in here?"

Fugaku shrugged. "It's not terrible. Your father already brought over some books, so I'm not bored. If I only had an alibi I would probably be out already, but there aren't any other suspects yet and the rest of the council is making a stink so the Hokage's leaving me in here for now." Once Shisui was done passing, Fugaku had quite a satisfactory lunch laid out in front of him: Shisui's little sister had generously prepared two different types of sandwiches, a thermos full of tea, an apple and a large slice of cake. "If you keep bringing me food like this I'll never want to leave—after all, nobody can force a suspected criminal to do police paperwork."

Shisui set the empty basket aside and leaned in closer to the bars. "Do you have any idea who did it?" he asked quietly.

"Tons of ideas, that's the problem. Listen—" Fugaku knelt next to the bars and matched Shisui's quiet tone. "—I understand that this isn't the sort of thing I can realistically expect you to be truthful about if it did happen to be true, but...you didn't do it, did you?"

Shisui's eyes widened and he drew back from the bars. "No, no of course not!" he insisted, shocked. "I mean, of course I kind of wanted it and was happy when it happened, but I would never have done it myself—I know the kind of backlash that would have for the clan."

Fugaku smiled in relief. "I just wanted to make sure. After all, things have been really shaken up for the clan right now: I'm in jail and Sasuke is away so he can't take over for me as the heir—if Danzou was alive he'd love this chance to make trouble. Anyway, your father is busy with the police so I wouldn't be surprised if you end up doing some...what's wrong?"

Shisui had suddenly blanched. "What if Danzou didn't have to be alive to make trouble?" he blurted out.

"What's all this about?" Fugaku asked.

"Someone tried to poison Hyuuga Hinata last night." Fugaku put his chicken salad sandwich down in shock as Shisui kept speaking. "We didn't find any connection to Danzou's death—the methods were different, the chakra traces were different, there was no reason for the same person to have motive to murder both of them—but what if Danzou's death _was_ the motive? He's always aimed to destabilize the clans, and what better way to do that to the Hyuuga than to destroy their future by killing the heir?"

"Tell me all about it." Fugaku ordered as Shisui had no choice but to pause for breath.

"Give me the other half of that sandwich first, Chiyo made me bring you lunch before I could eat mine."

Once Shisui's hunger had been somewhat sated, he told Fugaku everything he knew about the attempt on Hinata's life.

The week before, several of the Hyuuga teenagers had volunteered for an intense filing marathon to reduce some of the mission coordinators' backlog. Due to the Byakugan's unique capabilities, the Hyuuga were best suited for this task as they didn't even need to open the files to classify them. Hinata and her cousin Neji had been among the group.

Once the filing had been completed, the Hokage had funded a small party for the team so they would have something to look back on other than papercuts. At some point during these festivities, someone had slipped poison into Hinata's fruit punch, but a mixup with the cups had resulted in Neji drinking what had been meant for Hinata.

Neji had been occupied enough by conversation that by the time the poison took effect he had not consumed enough to be lethal; the more introverted Hinata might not have been so lucky. Currently, Neji was in the hospital, where Shisui had learned some of the story from him after the police were called.

"Things have been busier than I thought," Fugaku said when Shisui had finished. "Guess I can't stay in here forever after all, but for the moment I'm stuck. All right, for hypothesis' sake let's assume Danzou had some kind of death plan in place. Whoever is carrying it out must be pretty good if a room full of Hyuuga kids didn't notice someone poisoning one of the drinks. Also, we have to think about who might be next. The Hyuuga and the Uchiha are the two biggest clans so we probably top the list. They can't take another try at Hinata again right after the first one so—" Fugaku's heart caught in his chest. "Sasuke is probably next."

"What about Itachi? He's not officially in line for anything yet, do you think he'll be safe?" Shisui's voice was tight but he was otherwise doing an admirable job of keeping himself under control.

Fugaku shook his head. "If Danzou had any kind of death list for after he was gone, Itachi is certainly on it. Even if he isn't in line for the head of the clan, the council knows how he got here and what his skills are. Danzou wouldn't see Itachi as anything other than a weapon I could use against him."

Shisui sprang to his feet. "We should warn them!" he exclaimed, snatching up the basket and holding it in front of him defensively.

"Not yet!" Fugaku snapped. "Sasuke and Itachi should be perfectly safe in Iwa. If we panic now it will only let any hypothetical assassins know that _we_ know something's up. Also, you should be concerned about yourself since after my family, yours is next in line to head the clan."

"Good point." Shisui took a deep breath and lowered the basket. "I'd better be going, the visiting period should be almost over. I'll think of some excuse to tighten security back at the compound, and I'll report to you if I hear anything more."

As Shisui departed, Fugaku sighed and looked down at the remains of the lunch. It looked much less appetizing now but he took a few half-hearted bites of the cake before setting it aside. _I really hope I didn't save Sasuke from being murdered in Konoha just to have him get himself killed in the Iwa chuunin exams._

…

Sasuke wrinkled his nose a little as he looked at the imposing building where the written test portion of the chuunin exams would take place. He did not share Sakura's opinion that Iwa architecture was beautiful: he thought it was cold, cruel and claustrophobic. From Itachi's nervous glance back at the door as he followed Team 7 into the lobby, it was clear that his brother felt the same way.

With Itachi so tense, Sasuke did his best to lower at least the outward expression of his own stress. He wasn't able to judge how much it helped, as Itachi quickly buried his face in Neko-san's fur and ducked behind Kakashi.

Sakura fidgeted nervously as they waited together for the door of the test room to open. In the space of two minutes, she probably checked her bundle of approved pencils (they had been told what was approved during the orientation session the afternoon before) somewhere around 30 times. Naruto had slipped his headband off and was rubbing it between his fingers to the point where Sasuke was sure it would leave a groove.

Once there were only about three minutes before the doors to the test room were officially opened, Kakashi sighed and straightened up. "Well, it's time we were going," he said, ruffling the hair of the three genin in turn. "We'll get a hotel room and watch the second stage on TV, so make sure you look good!"

Naruto beamed at the prospect of being on television. "We will, Sensei!"

Sasuke stepped forward as Itachi moved to follow Kakashi out of the building. "Wait."

"Yes, Sasuke-san?" Itachi glided to a stop and turned to not quite look at him.

"I...I just…" Sasuke had heard the risks of the chuunin exams and wanted to make sure he didn't have any regrets beforehand, but it was so hard to get the words out now. "Good-bye, Nii-chan," he said, feeling it wasn't nearly enough. He reached up and would have touched his brother's hand, but both of them were far too close to various sharp parts of Neko-san. Instead, he ran his hand through Itachi's bangs and across his forehead, catching the briefest scarlet gleam before Itachi pulled back. "I'll see you later," he promised.

Itachi nodded briefly, then hurried after Kakashi.

_Kakashi had better take good care of him while I'm gone,_ Sasuke thought just before the doors opened and he and his teammates rushed to get advantageous spots in the test room.

[A/N: Now that I've gotten through the sticky bit that was the previous chapter, I'm hoping I'll be able to update lots!]


	7. Chapter 7

[A/N: I made a cover to use for all the Cruel World stories!]

7.

Kakashi put a hand on Itachi's shoulder to guide him as they made their way out of the crowded test building; the boy moved so quietly he was worried about losing him otherwise.

He tried to remember the last time he had been alone with Itachi, and realized that it would have been months ago, when Obito dropped him off in a panic after he had done something to anger his father.

At least, that had been how Kakashi thought of it at the time. His grudge against the Uchiha and especially against their head had kept him from seeing Fugaku's attempts to be a good father to his reclaimed child. While it hadn't been Kakashi's fault that Itachi was kidnapped soon after, it had been his actions that nearly made the rescue too late.

"Want to stop by the market?" Kakashi suggested as they reached the street again. "There's plenty of time before the second stage begins. We could pick up some souvenirs for Shisui and your dad."

Itachi stared at him for a moment. Kakashi couldn't see his eyes but he could feel the weight of the Mangekyou's gaze from behind his bangs. _He's trying to guess what I want him to say,_ Kakashi realized, and tried to hide any subconscious indications.

"Certainly," Itachi replied after a few more seconds, and Kakashi gently steered him towards the market, wondering whether this was what Itachi really wanted to do or if he was just fulfilling what he thought Kakashi's desires were.

The Chuunin exams could generally be counted on to put a village's economy on an upward trend for months afterward, and Iwa's merchants seemed determined to take as much advantage of this as possible. The market square was crammed with stalls filled to bursting with both ninja gear and civilian trinkets.

Itachi did not seem inclined to look around by himself, instead following Kakashi as he browsed, so the Jounin made sure not to miss out on anything that he felt might interest him. Besides, he wanted to pick out souvenirs as well.

Stopping in front of a stand selling hair accessories, Kakashi selected a flowered hairpin for Rin. Once he had paid for it, he turned to where he expected Itachi to be, directly behind him, only to see that the boy had paused at the last stand.

Kakashi slipped the hairpin into a pocket of his vest and ducked around a few other shoppers to reach Itachi's side. Neko-san had moved from his place in Itachi's arms and now was perched across his shoulders, leaving Itachi's hands free. To Kakashi's displeasure, the cat's new vantage point put it at perfect face-scratching height.

"Find something you like?" Kakashi asked, seeing the worked leather wristbraces Itachi was examining.

Itachi nodded slightly, taking care not to dislodge his passenger. "For Otou-sama," he explained softly. "And this for Shisui," he added, pointing to a delicately engraved knife.

"Good choice," Kakashi said as he noticed the quality of the items. "I'll take care of it; your dad gave me spending money for you." Before paying for Itachi's souvenirs, Kakashi picked out a wooden seal case for Obito and added it to the purchase. "Right, now that that's taken care of, let's find a hotel room before they're all snatched up. Naruto would flip if he ended up on TV and then found out nobody was watching him."

…

Sasuke beamed with pride as he marched triumphantly out of the testing room, Naruto and Sakura beside him. Almost half of the examinees had retired or been disqualified during the first stage, but Team 7 had come through unscathed.

From what Sasuke had noticed during the first stage, most of the teams had mainly concentrated on training for combat prior to the exams, leaving them open to failure in a situation that required pure subterfuge. While Kakashi had trained them in combat, he had also lent them to Shisui for some instruction in cheating, using an empty Academy classroom for their sessions.

"Are you sure we're really supposed to cheat?" Sakura asked after Shisui had outlined his training plan on the first day. "I mean, it seems kind of pointless, a test where everyone's cheating…"

"That's because it's going to test how good you are at cheating!" Shisui declared, bouncing off the desk where he had been sitting and pointing at the chalkboard which read 'Cheating for Cheaters' at the top. "Ninjas cheat! We cheat all the time! That's how we get stuff done without dying. I happen to be really good at it, that's why Kakashi asked me to train you."

"So...did you cheat during the Chuunin exams?" Sakura asked.

"You bet I did!" Shisui replied, springing back onto the desk. "In fact," he announced proudly, "I am only the third Chuunin in the history of the exams to be promoted almost entirely on the first-stage evaluation."

"Really?" Naruto asked eagerly, as always quick to grasp on anything that sounded like a fast track to success.

"Oh yes," Sasuke answered before Shisui could say anything. "We hear about it _all_ the time."

Shisui glared at him but ignored the comment otherwise. "Anyway," he said, turning on a CD player and filling the room with the sound of stirring music, "let's get to work!"

"Shisui-sensei?" Naruto raised his hand.

"Yeah?"

"Why are you playing the music from the training montage in _Shinobi Lawman?_"

Sasuke snickered under his breath—Shisui certainly wouldn't have known about Naruto's encyclopedia-like knowledge of B-movies.

"Um. It's, um, plagiarism," Shisui replied after a second of floundering. "It's a kind of cheating, so you should know about it. But enough of that, on to the first lesson!"

Shisui's eclectic lesson plan, ranging from "Methods of Distraction" to "99 Helpful Uses of Mirrors" to "How to Peek at Someone Else's Paper (Without Getting Caught Like an Idiot)," had resulted in Team 7 being well-prepared for the first stage of the Chuunin exams. Making it through the first stage with relative ease meant they had more preparation time for the second, which would be much more dangerous.

Still, with a team like this Sasuke felt they had a pretty good shot, and even if they didn't make it all the way through the final stage there was always the next exam to look forward to.

"The next stage is all the way on the other side of Iwa village," Naruto said, looking at the map from yesterday's orientation. "Let's go!" He pulled insistently on Sasuke's arm. "I don't want to get disqualified for being late!"

…

After their purchases in the market, Kakashi made his way with Itachi to an area where he knew he could find low-priced lodgings. If Team 7 made it through the second stage they would be in Iwa for the entire rest of the exams, which could be up to a month, so he couldn't afford to get too high quality of a room and risk running out of funds later on.

On the way, he paused a few times to buy food, since he didn't want to have to pay for delivery either. Every time he did so, Itachi insistently tried to carry Kakashi's purchases for him but Kakashi was determined not to let him. This seemed to confuse the boy, which only made Kakashi more firm in his position.

"Kakashi-san, I should take that…" Itachi said as Kakashi paid for a bag of persimmons.

"No, I'm fine," Kakashi countered, switching the hand that held the bag so Itachi couldn't make a grab for it. "Now, let's...Hello, what's up?" he finished, gracefully changing his tone to innocent amiability as a trio of Iwa Jounin approached to surround the pair. Itachi tensed slightly, and Kakashi moved so he was in front. "Here, take it," he muttered, handing Itachi the bag of persimmons. He wouldn't have conceded under other circumstances, but he thought it would be wise to have his hands free and it might serve to calm Itachi down a bit.

One of the Iwa Jounin stood forward, holding up an identification badge. "Kaga Yukihana," she introduced herself curtly. "You are Hatake Kakashi of Konoha?"

Kakashi nodded, and the woman's stiff expression softened slightly. "I'm sorry to bother you," she said with an apologetic smile as she looked at the shopping bag Itachi was holding. "We're running security check-ups to make sure there are no disturbances during the exam. Can you two come with us for a bit?"

After a few seconds spent observing the situation, Kakashi shrugged and nodded. There was no reason for anyone in Iwa to take issue with him so long after the way, and if he made a fuss news of it could make its way into the judges' ears and hurt Team 7's chances of making Chuunin. "Lead the way," he said, motioning for Itachi to follow him.

Itachi moved to do so, but as he turned Neko-san suddenly sprang off his shoulders and darted across the street after a cluster of small birds which immediately fluttered out of reach. Before Itachi could run after the cat, Kakashi grabbed his arm. "We'll find him later," he whispered in Itachi's ear. "Can't make any trouble for the Iwa people right now."

While Itachi looked unhappily behind them to where Neko-san had disappeared, he did not resist Kakashi's grip and followed obligingly after the Iwa ninjas.

Yukihana and her subordinates led Kakashi and Itachi to a large building near the gate. "We're going to ask you a few questions and then you can go back to what you were doing," Yukihana said as she swiped a card through the lock and motioned them through the heavy stone door.

Her words were nice and gently spoken, but as they were escorted down two flights of stairs and through three more doors, Kakashi began to doubt their sincerity. "Has something happened?" he asked as the last door slammed heavily shut behind them. "You're being awfully secure for just asking questions—you know, Iwa and Konoha aren't—"

Yukihana turned on him then, and from the fury in her eyes Kakashi knew nothing had been routine from the start. "Aren't what?" she snapped. "Aren't at war?"

At her threatening stance, Itachi dropped the persimmons and began to make the seal that would summon his swords, but Kakashi quickly motioned for him to stop. _I might still be able to talk our way out of this,_ he thought as he observed the location of the door and the three Iwa ninjas. Yukihana was standing in front of him, one of the others was barring the door, and the last was positioned behind Kakashi, blocking where Itachi stood. _Right now, Itachi looks enough like a civilian that he should stay that way._ "Yeah, we're not," Kakashi replied, sounding as confused as he genuinely felt at the way the conversation was going. "Unless something happened, like, yesterday?"

"Perhaps you can tell me that," Yukihana growled, pacing in front of him. She was petite but there was no weakness in her physique that Kakashi could see. "Konoha certainly talks peaceably enough, but then they send a party to the Chuunin exams with a demon in the midst! Have we done something to deserve such treachery?"

Finally Kakashi had caught onto some information he could use. "I understand why you're upset," he said, remembering the havoc Kushina had caused during the war when she believed her lover had been captured by the enemy, "but all precedent in the Chuunin exams has been that as long as they fulfill all other requirements, Jinchuuriki are allowed to—"

"What Jinchuuriki?" Yukihana demanded. "I'm talking about _that!_"

She was pointing at Itachi.

_Damn, _Kakashi thought._ Should have let him chase the cat._


	8. Chapter 8

[A/N: My computer seems to be having some battery issues, so there's a chance I might go AWOL for a bit if it chokes up on me before I get a new one. I'll try to avoid that though.]

8.

"I don't understand," Kakashi said, determined to keep up this bluff to the last. Besides, it was true.

"Is there so much to understand?" Yukihana flashed a quick gesture to her subordinates.

A moment later one of the other Iwa Jounin had a kunai to Kakashi's throat while the second had seized Itachi's arms and forced him to turn so that he faced the wall. _They know something about the eyes,_ Kakashi realized. _That's not good._

"Since you seem to have so much difficulty comprehending the situation," Yukihana purred sarcastically, relaxing by a small margin now that the situation looked to be in her favor, "I will explain it to you. During a time of truce so that all can visit Iwa, Konoha sends an assassin who has already murdered dozens here. That assassin plans to kill one of our leaders so that when Iwa retaliates Konoha has an excuse for war. There—am I close?"

"No, you have it all wrong!" Kakashi protested.

He had never heard of Sasori or the Akatsuki organization he belonged to having any conflict with Iwa, so there was no reason Itachi should have ever been there. There were a lot of dark-haired child assassins around, too many, to be honest, and Itachi must have been mistaken for another of them. Now he only had to explain things to the perhaps justifiably paranoid Iwa security forces. "Itachi, you've never been here before, have you?" he asked, turning as much as he dared in order to speak to Itachi's back.

Once Yukihana had her answer it would be a simple matter to explain everything else. Maybe a quick letter by hawk to the Hokage or Uchiha Fugaku, and then everything would be settled.

"I have."

Kakashi could have hit himself, but the sudden movement would startle the Iwa ninja into cutting his throat so he kept still and cursed mentally instead. Of course he hadn't considered the possibility that it really was Itachi they wanted! If he had he would never have asked: Sasori's 'training' had left Itachi practically without the ability to lie.

"Yukihana-san, I swear to you that there has been a misunderstanding," Kakashi insisted, slowly beginning to move his hands to the pocket where he kept his smoke bombs.

"And perhaps oaths coming from Konoha ninja can no longer be trusted," Yukihana retaliated. "But it is a certainty," she added, glancing at Kakashi's hands, "that even if you kill us three here, there is no way you can make it out of this building and across the village in time to prevent your team of genin from being killed by Iwa ANBU as soon as they enter the field for the second stage—which _will_ happen if I do not give the countermanding order within ten minutes."

Kakashi remembered the stone doors and dropped his hands. "Looks like you've got us," he said.

"You only realize it now?" Yukihana smirked, leaning against the desk on the far side of the small room. "Take off your vest and belt," she ordered. "And you," she told Itachi, "drop any weapons you have."

"Do as she says," Kakashi said as he obeyed Yukihana's command himself. Itachi made a slight movement and six small scrolls tumbled out of the sleeves of his jacket and fell to the floor. One of them rolled across the floor and burst open nearly at Yukihana's feet, releasing the hold of the summoning arrays and leaving a pile of katana and shuriken spread across the floor.

_And that surely doesn't help our case any,_ Kakashi thought with a sigh as he prepared to do everything he could to salvage the situation. While he hated feeling as defenseless as he did now that he had given up his weapons, he had no intention of starting a war, even by accident. And he especially did not want to risk Itachi's life after Fugaku had trusted him with it. "There," he said, "we have complied with everything you asked: is that what we would do if we were planning to assassinate someone? I promise you that we are plotting nothing."

"And I suppose you consider _this_ 'nothing' as well, then?" Yukihana demanded, sliding away a panel in the wall behind the desk and revealing a large video screen. Kakashi watched as she began playing grainy security footage of what looked like an Iwa shinobi breakroom.

The footage looked perfectly ordinary, and Kakashi was about to insist that Yukihana tell him what she was about when he saw the shadow that had appeared in a corner of the room. The Iwa ninja captured in the film noticed a new seconds later, just before the first one of them fell, his throat slashed by a blindingly fast katana strike.

Kakashi stared as the video continued and more and more of the Iwa ninja captured in it died. It could have been a movie except for the few brief but distinct shots of the assassin's face—_it really _was_ Itachi,_ Kakashi realized. _No wonder she came after us._ But the Itachi in the bloody security footage was tiny, barely more than a child. This had happened long before anyone in Konoha knew that he existed, or in Fugaku's case, knew that he was still alive.

"Well?" Yukihana said curtly as the video ended and the screen faded to black. "My brother died in that killing spree, you know. I've been hunting his murderer ever since."

"There's not much more I can say, really," Kakashi said. It was clear now that nothing he could do or say would convince Yukihana of their innocence, so now he would have to take it on himself to keep her from accidentally starting a war in her effort to prevent one. First, though, she would have to feel that she had won. "But there has to have been some mistake!" he protested, pushing desperation into his voice.

Yukihana's delicate nose crinkled in contempt. "You're much less skilled than I have been led to believe, Hatake Kakashi," she said, pushing another button to open a door leading to yet more stairs leading underground. "Take them down," she ordered her subordinates.

"Itachi, don't fight them," Kakashi ordered softly as they were shoved down the stairs into an underground prison. He was sure he could think of a way to get them out, if only Yukihana didn't get overexcited and decide to eliminate Itachi first.

…

"Watch out!"

Sasuke yanked Sakura back behind a cluster of rocks with Naruto diving to join them a few seconds later, just before another team of much older, larger and more brutal-looking chuunin prospects passed their hiding place.

They had made it into the second stage of the exam successfully, but now they would have to strategize, something they had not had time for yet since the rules of this stage had been secret until the last few minutes before the testing field opened.

Each team had been given a silver medallion on a leather cord. The task for each team was to make it to six chakra beacon checkpoints spread across the massive area, without losing the medallion since it was needed to react with the checkpoint. There was a four-day time limit, but the main issue was that there were sixteen teams left and each beacon would only register the medallion eight times.

Sasuke was currently wearing the medallion underneath his Uchiha shirt: they had agreed to pass it around among the three of them (the only bit of strategy they had settled on before the gates opened) but Sasuke had started with it since he was the best skilled in close combat.

"Now what?" Sakura asked once Sasuke signalled that it was safe to converse again.

"We have to look for the checkpoints, duh," Naruto said.

"You're right, but we can't just run around searching for them," Sasuke said. "We need a system."

"We could split the area into fourths, one for each day," Sakura suggested, laying out the vague map they had been given before entering the test field. Taking a pencil stub, she marked where they had entered, then drew two more lines to separate the space into approximate fourths.

"Looks good," Sasuke said. In an ordinary situation he would have suggested they split up, but he didn't quite trust himself to protect the medallion on his own. "So we're in the south-east quadrant right now. Let's work our way inward, then start on the north-west quadrant."

"Cool, let's go!" Naruto bounced to his feet as soon as Sasuke was finished talking. "I need to work off the five cups of ramen I had for lunch."

…

Four hours later, all three of them were a lot less eager. "We're almost to the first one," Sasuke said again, hoping to cheer them up again although the chakra he could sense from the checkpoint's beacon seemed no closer than it had a half hour ago.

They still had their medallion, but it was a close thing: they had been jumped twice by other teams hoping to narrow down their competition. Once they had seen their adversaries coming early enough to escape without having to fight.

The second time they had not been so lucky, and their assailants had successfully deduced that Sasuke, as the heir of the Uchiha and therefore presumably the most skilled member of Team 7, was carrying the medallion. While they had fought off the attack, Sasuke had a stinging gash across his chest where one of the opposite team had flung a kunai at him and barely missed severing the medallion's cord. Naruto had insisted on taking custody of the medallion after that.

"Let's take a look from up there," Naruto said, pointing at a slanted rock formation that at its tip was nearly thirty feet above the ground. "Maybe we can see it."

"And if not, we can see anyone else who might be planning to attack us," Sakura said, glancing at the bandages that were visible around Sasuke's chest through the long tear in his shirt.

From the top of the rock spire, they could see the surrounding area much more clearly. Naruto and Sakura looked around close by for any potential attackers, while Sasuke used the Sharingan to search for the checkpoint's chakra beacon.

"I found it!" he announced finally. "Ow, Naruto, what is it?" he asked as his teammate tugged sharply on his shirt, making the bandages pinch.

"Look over there," Naruto said, pointing west and away from where Sasuke had seen the beacon.

A short distance away, over a small hill, two teams of genin were engaged in heavy combat. From this distance Sasuke could make out no headband markings, but one team was clearly much younger than the other—perhaps even younger than Team 7. They were struggling to match up with the other team, and losing ground rapidly.

"It's not our problem," Sasuke said firmly. "The beacon is to the north." They only had a limited amount of time, so they couldn't afford to be sidetracked from their mission. Besides, if one looked at it the right way this meant there would just be less competition for the beacons.

"Come on, it's only a few minutes!" Naruto protested. "They're gonna get slaughtered!" As he spoke, one of the smaller genin was tossed up by a wind technique and flung against the rock behind the battleground, then slid down it and lay motionless. "Look, we can go to the beacon thing right afterwards. Pinky swear."

Sasuke sighed and brushed away Naruto's hand. "Fine."

Naruto could be just too nice sometimes. Sasuke had to admit, though, that Naruto's well-meant outreaches were occasionally helpful. Maybe now would be one of those times.

[A/N: In commemoration of Team 7 finally getting to do something in Cruel World, I posted a new side story! Please check it out~]


	9. Chapter 9

[A/N: I edited some of the test rules in Chapter 8 so you might want to re-read that bit if you read it when it was first uploaded.]

9.

Once the decision had been made, it only took a few more seconds of deliberation before Team 7 went into action. Sasuke jumped down from the rock spire and ran for the hill in order to come on the battlefield from the front. Naruto and Sakura went around the hill to flank their targets.

Sasuke reached the peak of the hill and leapt off, landing squarely between the two sides with a spread of kunai ready in each hand. He couldn't see the reaction of the team they intended to help, since they were behind him, but the other team was obviously furious at the intrusion.

"Back off, squirt, this isn't your fight," one of them growled, flinging a spread of shuriken at him.

Sasuke flipped out of the way and threw a handful of kunai in return. His teammates would arrive shortly, so he only had to keep the other team's attention for a few more seconds until—

_"Kage bunshin no jutsu!"_

Sasuke ducked back against the rock as a veritable wave of Narutos swept over where he had been fighting. The other team noticed them too late and was caught in the stampede, which rushed into the distance and vanished in a cloud of dust.

Sakura had made sure the members of the team they were trying to help had been out of the way of Naruto's onslaught and now she and Sasuke helped them to their feet.

They were indeed as young as they had looked from a distance, and all three wore Iwa headbands. The injured one was the smallest at maybe nine years old, with pale brown hair so long Sasuke wasn't sure whether he was looking at a girl or a boy. The other boy and girl looked a little older.

"Look, look, I got the thing!" Naruto yelled as he ran back to join them, waving the medallion he had stolen during the confusion of his one-man charge. "Hey, are all you guys okay?" he said as he reached his teammates and the Iwa team they had rescued.

"Yeah," the Iwa girl said. "You saved our lives." She glanced at the medallion Naruto was holding. "You...you can have ours, if you want."

"What? No!" Naruto shouted as the Iwa boy started to unzip his jacket to take off the medallion.

Sasuke also reached out to stop him—he didn't want the Iwa team to feel they owed Team 7 a favor just because they had been trying to help. It reminded him too much of Itachi at the beginning, when he behaved as if he owed them his service merely for the privilege of existing. "We've already reduced our opponents by one, surely that's enough."

Sakura nodded firmly as she knelt by the injured Iwa child. "Are you okay, sweetie? What's your name? How many fingers am I holding up?"

"I'll be okay if you go out with me," the boy said as he pushed his hair back and sat up. Sakura blinked, then blushed. "Name's Kazuki, and I see three fingers."

"Right, you're not concussed, then," Sakura said, standing up and taking a step back.

"I was going to say, if he's hitting on you then he's fine," the other Iwa boy said as he re-zipped his jacket. "My name's Souma. Sorry about Kazuki, he's a brat."

Kazuki stuck his tongue out at Souma and ducked a retaliating swat.

The girl ignored their bickering. "I'm Kaga Hiroko," she said. "We're Iwa Team 12. How about you three?"

"We're Konoha Team 7," Sasuke said. "I'm Uchiha Sasuke. These are Uzumaki Naruto and Haruno Sakura. Now, we didn't want your medallion, but perhaps there's something else you can help us with...do you know where any of the other beacons are?"

…

Shisui frowned as he left the jail after his third meeting with Fugaku in as many days. The search for the killer of Danzou and the would-be killer of Hyuuga Hinata had yet to yield results nor had Shisui yet been able to connect Danzou's death with the attempt on Hinata.

Sasuke and the others would have been in Iwa for almost a week now, which would mean that if they were eliminated after the second stage they would soon be returning. If Danzou's death had been the trigger of Hinata's attempted assassination, whoever was behind it had to be found before Sasuke and Itachi were back in the village where they would become targets as well.

So far, Shisui and Fugaku were the only ones who suspected this, but if Shisui couldn't find something soon to either prove or disprove the Danzou theory he would have to consult his father. Since that would probably lead to (however accidentally) the rest of the clan hearing about it, Shisui wanted to avoid that if at all possible.

With nothing else to do for a few hours, Shisui decided to make another visit to the hospital to see if Neji had remembered anything else about the incident where he had been poisoned. He would have preferred to talk to the actual target, Hinata, but when he had visited the Hyuuga estate he had been promptly thrown out before he could even get near the girl—it seemed that Hyuuga Hiashi was taking no chances with his daughters' safety as neither Hinata nor Hanabi had appeared in public since the incident.

Shisui had managed to corner some of the other Hyuuga teens who had been at the party and get statements from them, but so far none of them had been able to give any information that would provide a hint as to who the police should be searching for.

By this point, Shisui was admittedly a bit annoyed that an entire room full of Hyuuga—the clan with the reputation of being able to see _everything_—had managed to not notice a would-be murderer among them. _Maybe it _was_ one of them, and this doesn't have anything to do with Danzou at all,_ he wondered. Still, Hiashi had appeared confident that the attack had come from outside the Hyuuga, and if one of the Uchiha were to broach the possibility that one of his own clan members was the culprit it would only make things worse between the two clans.

When he reached the hospital, all it took was his second-best roguishly charming smile and the receptionist in the lobby gave him a visitor pass and directions to Neji's room.

Shisui had briefly had the opportunity to interrogate Neji when the police had first arrived on the poisoning scene. While Neji had done his best to be helpful then he had not been lucid enough to give more than the most basic and vital information. Hopefully now that he had been able to recover for a few days he would be able to provide more details that Shisui could use to figure out if there really was anything to the Danzou theory.

Neji's room was at the far end of one of the less populated wards in the hospital. Shisui gave the door a brief knock before pushing it open and making his way in. "Feeling any better?" he asked.

Neji set down the book he had been reading and pulled off his ill-fitting reading glasses. "A bit," he replied, squinting slightly as he looked over at Shisui. In order to prevent his eyes from leeching chakra needed to recover from the poisoning, Neji's Byakugan had been blocked off completely and he was evidently having some trouble adjusting. "Why are you here?"

While Neji's tone was cool and aloof, Shisui knew enough to understand that it was due to personality and upbringing, not dislike. Despite the occasional bad feelings between their two clans, Shisui and Neji actually got on fairly well when they had the chance to associate with each other. Their positions as close but mostly sidelined relatives of their respective clans' head families were similar, although Neji's lot was obviously the worse of the two.

"I thought I'd see if you remembered anything else now that you're feeling better," Shisui explained, spinning the chair beside Neji's bed around so he could lean over the back of it. "Did you see anyone suspicious, or…?" Shisui left the end of the question blank in order to give Neji a large opening for response.

Neji frowned in concentration, then winced, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Sorry," he said after taking a steadying breath. "None of us were using the Byakugan, we were all too tired for that...Kiba came as Hinata's plus-one, and there might have been another non-Hyuuga-or two, but none that stood out..."

"Don't worry about it," Shisui said. "Call the police office and ask for me if you do remember something, okay?" He stood to leave, straightening out the chair, then paused. "Is there anything I can do for you? Sasuke's gone so I can steal one of his old handheld controllers for you as long as he never finds out a Hyuuga touched it."

Neji actually laughed at that, although only for a moment. "I'll take you up on that," he said.

"Cool," Shisui replied. "Would you rather have _Ninja vs. Vampires _or_ Samurai Showdown V?_ Oh, he also has _Princess Matchmaker_ for some reason, I think Sakura left it at his place and he forgot to give it back…"

"Whatever you want, as long as Sasuke won't be too furious you let a Hyuuga touch it." Neji smirked a little as he picked his glasses up again.

"Gotcha, back in a sec," Shisui declared before flickering into Sasuke's bedroom. "Great Ninetails!" he gasped a moment later as he was nearly buried by a pile of laundry left behind from Sasuke's packing. Sasuke's closet was on the other side of the pile so Shisui waded through it as best he could. Itachi's half of the room was still neat, and Shisui noticed that Sasuke had somehow managed to prevent his mess from encroaching on his brother's space.

"Finally!" Shisui exclaimed as he reached Sasuke's closet and pulled open the drawer he knew contained all of Sasuke's obsolete or discarded video game equipment. Fortunately the drawer was more organized than the rest of Sasuke's room, and it only took Shisui a short time to find a controller that wasn't even old, just scratched, as well as game cartridges for _Ninja vs. Vampires _and_ Princess Matchmaker_.

On his return, Shisui misaimed his flicker slightly and ended up in the hallway just outside Neji's room. Opening the door, he stepped inside. "I'm back and I brought your—" he began before flickering across the room, the objects he was holding tumbling to the floor as he tackled the black-clad figure attempting to smother Neji with a pillow.

[A/N: Sorry for not updating in a while! School started and I don't have a paper to procrastinate on yet. Will try and make the next update faster, especially considering where this one ended.]


	10. Chapter 10

[A/N: Wow, sorry for leaving you guys with that cliffhanger! I feel really bad about that, but school was very very busy (I'm trying to transfer out of my junior college to a 4-year school).]

10.

The intruder, a pale, dark-haired teen wearing skin-tight black clothes, skidded across the floor as Shisui threw him off the bed. Shisui was only able to spare a glance to make sure Neji was still breathing before the boy threw a spread of kunai, aiming past his shoulder at where Neji was lying. Flickering a foot to the side, Shisui was able to catch all but one, which glanced harmlessly off the side of the mattress.

As he looked at the person who had just tried to murder his star witness, Shisui realized why the Hyuuga hadn't noticed an infiltrator in their midst—if it had been this boy or anyone of a similar appearance, he could easily have passed for a Hyuuga in a situation where the Byakugan wasn't being used.

"Who are you?" Shisui demanded. "You won't get away with attacking one of the Hyuuga very easily: if you fess up I can try to get you a deal…"

The boy responded by pulling out a thin scroll and a brush. Being highly suspicious of strange scrolls in combat, Shisui flickered forward in an attempt to grab him, but before he could seize his opponent the brush flashed across the paper and Shisui found himself attempting to fend off a snarling wolf built of solid ink.

By the time Shisui slashed at the wolf enough that it dissipated into a splatter of sticky, dark ink (that was all over his best uniform—why did these things always happen to him?) the intruder had vanished through the open window. The curtains were still rustling as Shisui dashed over to look out, but he was nowhere in sight.

"Are you okay?" he asked, turning back and picking up the kunai scattered across the floor and the pillow that had nearly been used to kill his friend as he returned to Neji's side.

Neji nodded as Shisui helped him sit up and replaced the pillow. "It was only a few seconds," he said. Neji's voice was hoarse and he coughed a little after he spoke, but he sounded lively enough to Shisui. "He must have been waiting for you to leave, but you came back too quickly…"

"Did you recognize him?" Shisui asked hopefully before pressing the alarm on the bedside table that would bring security personnel to the room. He needed to give chase to the attempted killer as soon as possible, but he wasn't about to risk leaving Neji alone again when a departure of less than a minute had nearly resulted in his death.

"Maybe," Neji said although without a large amount of conviction. "Without the Byakugan I can't be sure, but he might have been at the party."

_Well, as breaks go it's not the best but at least I have _something_ to go on now…_ "Security should be up here soon," Shisui said, standing up and retrieving the video game paraphernalia that he had dropped by the door when he first entered. "Here's the stuff," he added, dumping it in Neji's lap. "Anything else I can do for you?"

"Can you find my glasses?" Neji looked ashamed at having to ask for help looking for something, but confined to the bed and unable to use the Byakugan there was nothing else he could do. "They came off while I was fighting him; they're probably broken, but—"

A quick glance under the bed revealed the glasses. "Here you go," Shisui said, picking them up. "They're a little bent but the lenses are fine." He started to wipe them on his shirt but aborted the action immediately when he realized that that would only result in getting ninja ink all over them.

By this point, hospital security shinobi had reached the room, and Shisui gave them a brief explanation of the incident before leaving to carry out his own investigation. The intruder's chakra was still present around the window, and with luck he would be able to run him to ground before the trail dissipated.

…

Now that they were in a group of six, things went much more easily for for everyone in Konoha Team 7 and Iwa Team 12. Not only were they able to combine their knowledge of chakra beacon locations, so that after another day they only had one beacon left to find, but they could make their way around the area more safely.

There were two days left in the test by this point. At least six teams had been eliminated by loss of their medallions, one of them being the team that Team 7 had ambushed.

"Any ideas where the last beacon is?" Sasuke asked as they set up their camp for the night in a small rock cave. Sakura and Hiroko were sitting in one corner, giggling and arranging each others' hair, and Kazuki and Naruto were arguing by the fire about what kind of instant ramen they were going to cook (because of course Naruto had packed instant ramen).

Souma pulled out a map that his team had been compiling with the locations of all the beacons his team and Team 7 had found. "The largest area left without a beacon is in the north-east, where the lake is," he said. "It's not too far from here so we should be able to make it there tomorrow morning."

"Great," Sasuke said. "I can't wait for this test to be over."

"You and me both," Souma said. "Kazuki is the _worst_ to be stuck camping with."

Sasuke laughed. "If you think that you should try camping with Naruto sometime."

Souma sighed and shook his head as he put the map away. "I feel for you, man. We should get shirts or something: 'Teammate to the Worst Ninja in Town', how's that?"

"Hey, at least yours doesn't wear _orange_ for _stealth missions._ I really have no idea how he's still alive sometimes."

By this point, Naruto and Kazuki had finally come to some kind of agreement on what flavor of instant ramen would be the group's main course this evening and were beginning to boil the water. Sasuke fished his handheld game console out of his pack, hoping it still had enough charge left to last until the food was ready.

"You play video games?" Souma asked, seeing the device.

"Yeah," Sasuke replied defensively. "Why?"

"No, that's awesome! Nobody around here likes video games: I have to get them shipped in from Iron Country and it takes months. Which one is that?"

"_Ninja vs. Zombies 2,_" Sasuke replied.

"Wow, I only have the first one," Souma said, leaning over Sasuke's shoulder to see the screen in the dim firelight. "The graphics are so much better in this one! Listen, when we get out of this stage you should come over to my place so we can play together: there's going to be a few week's break before the last stage starts, so we'll have plenty of time."

"Sounds good," Sasuke replied. "Looks like the ramen's finished, so we'd better hurry or Naruto and Kazuki will eat it all."

…

Kakashi sat quietly in his cell and considered his options. He had by now been held in this underground dungeon for two days—Itachi had been separated from him as soon as they were apprehended and he had no idea of his location or even if he was still alive. It was entirely possible that Yukihana had killed Itachi as soon as she had him unable to defend himself.

If that had happened Kakashi would be safer here in his cell than returning to Konoha to face Fugaku's wrath. His father had chosen death rather than living with a similar mistake—Kakashi could imagine things turning out the same way with him.

The cell where Kakashi had been incarcerated was carved out of solid rock, as was most of the city. The door was a massive metal affair that, from the slam it had made when Kakashi was first locked in, must have weighed a few hundred pounds.

The Iwa security forces were apparently confident enough in the strength of their prison that Kakashi was only restrained with a pair of handcuffs bearing seals to prevent chakra use. For anyone except Kakashi, this might have worked.

Reaching up to pull off his headband, he began to undo two of the tiny screws holding the metal plate. While he sacrificed a couple fingernails in the process, several minutes later he was able to separate the metal and fabric to access his emergency tools sandwiched in between. There were no weapons, but the tiny roll of wire inside fit Kakashi's current needs exactly. Straightening out a section of the wire, Kakashi started working on the handcuffs.

The handcuffs proved tougher than the screws had been, but finally Kakashi was able to get them off. Now he could work on the real obstacle: the door.

With his hands now freed, Kakashi was able to pull off his turtleneck and undershirt, taking care not to dislodge his mask in the process. Since no-one had barged in to stop him yet he was assuming there were no cameras in the cell, but he wasn't about to risk showing his face.

Kakashi turned the undershirt inside-out, revealing the seals that had been painted on the inside, and began tearing them apart. There were the equivalent of twelve explosive tags on the front of the undershirt, which hopefully would be enough to take out the door with some to spare. The back of the shirt contained the seals for smoke tags, which would come in handy once he was actually out.

After placing four tags along the hinge side of the door and two on the lock, Kakashi rolled up the rest of the torn pieces of his undershirt and stuffed them in a pocket of his pants, then activated the seals. As soon as he did so he remembered that he hadn't put his shirt back on, but it was too late now.

Hopefully he had used enough seals: it would just be embarrassing if his escape fizzled out before it even started.

As the seals on the makeshift tags began to hiss, Kakashi backed into the opposite corner of the cell so he wouldn't be caught by the concussion. The explosion rumbled and echoed through his cell, and he knew that the whole of the prison must have heard it.

Once the smoke cleared, Kakashi could see that the door was now hanging on by only a few scraps of metal around the hinges. One kick brought it down, and he snatched up his shirt as he darted out of the cell, immediately jumping up to cling onto the craggy ceiling where he would be less likely to be spotted by Iwa shinobi coming to investigate.

The first order of business now, he decided as he struggled to get the shirt back on while upside-down, was to find out what had happened to Itachi. And to do that, he would have to head even further into the depths of the underground prison.


End file.
